During the fabrication of circuit boards, one of the last operations to be done is to trim off the excess material around the periphery of the finished board and bring its outside dimensions to size. Since the center part of the board may require some large or odd-shapped holes to be cut, a common method of manufacture is to move the equipment along a pre-selected path or route the same over the board to the specific locations of the odd centered cut-outs as well as to route the equipment about the outside periphery with a template controlled manual machine similar to an engraving machine.
Recently, expensive automatic high production machines using computer path control technology are being used for the routing operations.
The present invention was developed as a low-cost substitute for the high cost computer-type system to do the relatively simple routing operations.